Standards for crosstalk in connectors has become increasingly stringent. For example, in category 5 of ANSI/TIA/EIA - 568A Standard, it is required that a 25 pair ribbon cable connector exhibit near-end crosstalk which is less than 40 dB at 100 MHz using the standard power sum measurement, which is the sum of crosstalk from all the pairs of the connector.
Recently, it has been proposed to produce a category 5 connector by inclusion of conductors in a side-by-side relation to provide crosstalk of a polarity opposite to the mating section of the connector. (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,562,479.) It has also been proposed to reduce crosstalk, for example in modular jacks, by crossing over certain conductors. (See U.S. Pat. No. 5,186,647 issued to Denkmann et al.) It has also been suggested that certain conductors in a modular jack could be mounted above certain other conductors to provide capacitive coupling and thereby induce opposite polarity crosstalk. The conductors could be formed as lead frames or printed on a printed circuit board. (See British Patent No. 2,271,678 issued to Pinney et al.)
It has also been suggested that a printed wiring board connector could compensate for crosstalk in its mating section by including capacitive coupling unbalance between conductor pairs which produced crosstalk of an opposite polarity. (See, U.S. patent application of Conorich, Ser. No. 08/673711, filed on Jun. 21, 1996.) Further, a device has been proposed for converting a connector to category 5 performance by providing vertically aligned conductor paths in a multi-layer board such that the paths form capacitor plates which capacitively couple adjacent conductor paths in order to produce crosstalk of a polarity opposite to the connector. (See, U.S. patent application of Choudhury, Ser. No. 08/668553, filed Jun. 21, 1996.)